Johann Friedrich von Brandt

Johann Friedrich von Brandt (25 May 1802 to 15 July 1879) was a German-Russian naturalist who worked mostly in Russia. Born in Jüterbog and educated at a gymnasium in Wittenberg and the University of Berlin, he emigrated to Russia in 1831 and was soon appointed director of the Zoological Museum of the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, where he encouraged the collection of native animals and received specimens from the expeditions of Severtzov, Przhevalsky, Middendorff, Schrenck and Gustav Radde. He described several birds collected by Russian explorers off the Pacific coast of North America, including Brandt's cormorant, the red-legged kittiwake and the spectacled eider. As a paleontologist he ranks among the best, and he was also an entomologist who specialised in beetles and millipedes. He continued Friedrich Gottlob Hayne's work on plants used in medicine, wrote on the poisonous plants of Germany, and died in Merreküll in the Governorate of Estonia. Brandt's bat, Brandt's hedgehog, three other mammals and the lizard Iranolacerta brandtii are named in his memory.